WorldTime

New European Daylight Savings Time

Starting in 1996, most of Europe will change to the summer hour (daylight savings time) the last weekend of March, and change back to the winter hour (standard time) the last weekend of October. The U.K. did this already, but prior to this year, most of the rest of Europe changed back to the winter hour the last weekend of September. The 100/200LXs are set up to show the whole of Europe changing in September. So, prior to now, U.K. cities showed the wrong time in October, and as of now, all of the European cities will show the wrong time in October.

However, there is a simple solution, thanks to the foresight of the developer. Put a new TIMEZONE.DAT in C:\_DAT. It is a pure ASCII text file and should contain the following lines:

European

3:25-31 6 1:00

10:25-31 6 0:00

Northern

4:1-7 6 1:00

10:25-31 6 0:00

Southern

3:1-7 6 0:00

10:25-31 6 1:00

  1. 1. Open Memo, press (MENU) File Open, type in the following: d:\_sys\timezone.dat and press (ENTER).

  2. 2. Edit the text in this file to match the preceding text (double check to make sure you got it correct). When you're done making your changes, press (MENU) File SaveAs, key in C:\_DAT\TIMEZONE.DAT and press (F10) to save this file in the new location C:\_DAT. (You can not this file save the file in it's original location (D:\_DAT) because the D directory is ROM (read only memory). WorldTime first looks to C:\_DAT for TIMEZONE.DAT. If it can't find it there, it defaults to the version in D:\_SYS.

The original TIMEZONE .DAT file has three entries, but you can add more entries in this file to take into account any local differences to the time zones. You cannot use the same initial letter for the time zone name (i.e., since you already have a "European" you cannot add a "East European"). This limitation allows up to 26 different timezones. In addition, you must follow the format shown in the example below:

European

3:25-31 6 1:00

10:25-31 6 0:00

Understand this format as follows:

Line 1: European = (name of time zone);

Line 2: 3:25-31 (month and date range to take effect) ; 6 (day of the week to take effect); 1:00 (start daylight savings)

Line 3: 10:25-31 (month and date range to take effect) 6 (day of the week) 0:00 (start standard time)

If you add any new timezones, you will have to go to WorldTime and edit each of the cities in that new time zone. Start WorldTime, highlight the city you want to edit, and press (ENTER) to go to the individual city data screen. Press (ALT)-(M) to choose Automatic Daylight Savings and press (ENTER) once to go to the choice box. Use the Down or UpArrow keys to scroll through the list and highlight the correct time zone. Press (F10) to save your selection.

Frank Louvers (Belgium) CompuServe ID: [72361,2161]